Killers Anonymous
by Shak
Summary: Nonromantic fanfic, a girl is found outside a hotel and Nick and Sara piece together the evidence to uncover the truth.


**09:48, Gastrono Hotel Room 448**

The sun pierced through the little tears in the curtains, spiking onto Sally's bloodshot eyes, which looked straight ahead blankly, telling tales of the drinking from the previous night. The room embraced the aura of silence, only the occasional creaking spring disturbing the serenity of the scene.

Sally blinked, trying to flutter away the headache with her pretty eyelashes and to blind out the memories of the party, where she had swallowed too much champagne, and gambled too much money. But it was Vegas, she kept on telling herself, lying to herself that none of it mattered, but since her marriage had collapsed in the wake of Bill telling her about his affair with the gym instructor her life had been a spiral of downward decline, propped up by drinks and every opportunity to turn her wages into chips. What a mire of clichés she thought rubbing away the dust in her eyes and smudging black, powdery mascara onto her cheeks. She swung her hand to the table, flailing wildly as if it was an out-of-control sock, and half-cringed as she heard the glass tumble over and roll across the wooden surface. There was no point trying to stop it, and it would expend well needed energy that she would need to see herself through the day. She thankfully heard it hit the carpet with a dull thud, instead of the expected shattering and recommenced flailing until her hand finally grasped what she was looking for.

God, was it ten o'clock already? She usually woke up every two hours on the dot when she had been drinking, but maybe the champagne still had an effect on her where most drinks failed. Picking up the glass, she wandered through to the closet bathroom and poured herself a much needed glass of water. Her throat felt like someone had been sitting on her tongue sanding away all night. She lit a cigarette and sipped the water, smoke curling up towards the idle ceiling fan. It was time to find out what sort of day awaited her.

The bright light took her by surprise, another fine Nevada morning, basking the entire room in a glow of contentment and giving Sally a ghostly appearance, white, worn skin sagging around her eyes and worry lines clear to all on her forehead, mascara silhouetting her eyes and cheek bones like a movie villain. Maybe this was why she loved rooms several floors up, so that no-one would be able to see her with her early morning demeanour. With that lovely sound that every French door makes when it is opened, ending with a little squeak as the rubber meets the end of the rail, Sally stepped out onto the balcony. She could see all the way down to the Strip from here.

If things had worked out differently, maybe she would have made something with her life, or had a son or a daughter, with a wonderful husband and a big house, but things worked out bad, and now, the balcony looked attractive, the railings beckoned to her, flaking rust-coloured paint drawing her close. Taking a long drag on her cigarette she could imagine it being her last, it would be so easy, just walk to the edge, climb up and then just close her eyes and drop deadweight. What a strange word she thought, what weight was deadweight? She felt almost euphoric now, the early morning cigarette pumping carbon monoxide into her brain and giving her that slightly dopy, high feeling that all smokers love and hate. Wandering to the edge she closed her eyes to squeeze a tear down her cheek, letting it hang on her tired chin before dropping onto the balcony. Looking out she thought about her life and how little it was worth, just a little more now, stepping closer to the edge, looking out and then down. The glass would not bounce on the balcony, it shattered, not fragmenting, just breaking in half, a few shards scattered around the balcony.

Sally looked down again, four floors below at the ground. She gazed, surprise and natural fear shook her as she took in the twisted body below her, the gold necklace glittering in the sunlight, the unstaring eyes gazing back up at her, the arms flung wide and the leg hanging just a bit too far out to be right. The eyes seemed to be staring right back at Sally, daring her to join the cadaver on the ground, but stumbling backwards, Sally half-fell, half-sat on the balcony, not noticing the glass digging into her skin like miniature daggers, not noticing the puddle she sat in from the glass of water, and not noticing the dropped cigarette as it bounced on her leg, leaving a fresh burn before sizzling to rest. She hardly even noticed her scream, but others did, and after a phone call sirens pulled up to look at the girl on the ground with the big gold necklace round her neck, the pendant forming just one word – Jill.

**10:21, Gastrono Hotel Out Front**

After a brief word, Grissom came striding towards Nick and Sara from the squaddie. As he walked he carefully removed his sunglasses and tucked them into his CSI jacket pocket, revealing the serious eyes that everyone in the Vegas PD knew.

"Ok, it was rung in by that young lady over there, Miss Sally Connor," he said. "Go have a word with her Sara, we'll start on the body."

With a murmur of agreement Sara stalked across to where Sally was and gave her a small but friendly smile, before she began the long process of extracting every last detail from her.

Nick wandered towards the body, removing his own sunglasses along the way, and squatted down to look closer. She was a good looking kid, about eighteen with deep blue eyes, and long flowing blonde hair.

The first thing Nick noticed was the position of her arms, splayed in front of her and looking unharmed except for some mild grazing.

"You think she jumped?"

Grissom paused before he answered Nick's question, looking the body over carefully and taking in what he had known from the moment he first saw the body where it lay.

"Look at her head, she didn't get that from the ground."

Carefully cradling the girl's head, Nick turned it gently and took in the dark red gash running from her crown to the back of her neck and drew in the slightest breath as he saw the extent of the injury.

"That's pretty nasty, think it's from the murder weapon? We looking for a baseball bat?"

Once again Grissom paused before answering, collecting the mass of thoughts swirling in his seasoned mind.

"No, we're looking for a crime scene," he said, before pointing at the ground around the head. "You see any blood from that?"

Nick took a bag and cotton bud from his kit, and swabbed a small round stain on the ground.

"Yeah, what about this?"

The faintest trace of a grim smile reached Gil's lips before being stolen away by good humour.

"One drop of blood and a massive head wound." The important word was 'drop', the tiny round splodge telling them it had fallen to the ground from straight above.

"Which means it probably came from the perp." Nick finished the train of thought that Grissom had started and packed away the evidence bag. Taking his tweezers next he bent closer to the body and carefully threaded a single hair from her belt.

"Keep going, Nick, I'll check back on you in a few minutes." Grissom wheeled on the ball of his foot before Nick could reply and wandered in what seemed like a random direction away from the body.

Something had caught his eye, a small brown mess a bit further from the hotel driveway, steaming on the tarmac. Looking closer he took in the details in a millisecond – the fat tyre tread running through the middle of the dog excrement and the splash of colour, red on brown, buried dead centre in the track. Bending down he swabbed the stain and started making a representation of the track when Nick came over with Sara.

"She didn't have anything to do with it," Sara started, "just the wrong person in the wrong place, says she was at a party all night, didn't get home until about three, and remembers none of it. There's about ten people she named who will corroborate her story and most of them are croupiers. What you got, is that blood?"

"No, it's not the right consistency, you find anything else Nick?"

"She had a library card in her jacket pocket, Jill Landers. I also got this." He held up a bag which contained the tiniest sliver of silver paint. "It was on her jacket, maybe a hit and run?"

"How many times have you heard of a hit and dump and run?" Grissom left the question hanging in the air before turning back to his work.

**11.36, The Lab**

"So what we got here?" Greg looked cheeky as ever, with a little smirk on his lips as he asked. "This from the jumper at the hotel? Was she pushed?"

"Unless she was pushed by a silver car out her window, there wasn't any jumping involved." Nick handed over the hair, paint and blood swab, and then the second swab.

"We're not sure if this is blood, so just run some stuff on it, see if you can get me anything."

Warrick's face appeared at the door.

"You want to see me Nick?"

"Yeah," Nick said fishing in the folder he carried, "you any idea what this might be from?" He laid the photo of the tire track on the lab desk.

Taking in the three lines, the grooves on either side and the diamond pattern in the middle, he finally answered.

"It's pretty generic, but I'd say you're looking at a Lexus, can't help on the model sorry."

"Yeah no problem, it's a start." Nick shrugged and put on a half smile as Sara showed.

"Hey Nick, we got the parents' address. You coming?"

**11.50, House of John and Mary Landers**

Nick and Sara glanced at each other as they waited for the door to open. This was the worst part of the job, it was bad enough telling parents that they had lost a child, it was worse having to question them so soon after it happened. There was the sound of a door unlocking and a middle-aged woman opened it. She had curls of once-blonde, now silvery hair resting on her shoulders and deep blue eyes.

"Yes, can I help you?"

"Mrs. Landers?" Sara held up her ID as she asked the question, and once Mary confirmed it, she continued. "It's about Jill." At that moment, the deep blue eyes aged ten years and the whole of Mary's face contorted and creased, tears rolled down her face and she called for her husband before Sara told them about the hotel.

A few minutes later, the Landers' were as composed as could be possibly expected of them, sobbing and holding hands on the couch, one of John Landers' strong arms wrapped around Mary, pulling her close to him for her and for him. Every time they spoke it was interspersed with sobs, and occasionally, when they realised they were talking about their only daughter in the past tense, or when one of the questions hit them especially hard, the sobs would turn into full-blown weeping from Mary and John's jaw would turn slightly pale from the strain of holding back tears.

"She was such a good girl," Mary began, "always happy with whatever she had. She volunteered at the hostel down the road you know. She had lots of friends, and they all loved her. She did great at school, she wanted to be a doctor."

"Did you know of anyone who might want to hurt her?" The usual question, it was never easier though. This time it was John who replied.

"No-one would want to hurt Jill. She was a good kid. Everyone adored her, she was homecoming queen last year." A photo on the mantelpiece testified to the accuracy of this, and one next to it showed Jill with a girl who could almost have been her sister at first glance.

"Excuse me, but who's she with in that photo?" Nick asked, his mind wheels slowly turning.

"That's her best friend," answered Mary, "Jane Lowestoft. She lives two doors down with her father. She's a lovely girl as well, she and Jill, they were like sisters. They've been best friends since they were five."

"So where was your daughter yesterday evening?" Sara returned the questions to the usual track.

"Well I don't know about last night, but she was with Jane all afternoon."

Back on the street, Sara's phone rang.

"Hey," Greg's voice answered her.

"That paint you found is definitely car paint, I'm running some more tests on it but I don't think it'll help determine what car it's from unless you can get me something to match it to."

"Yeah that's ok for now, what about the blood swabs?" she replied, her voice dripping with expectation.

"One of them isn't blood, it gives a whole new meaning to hot dog." The strange response firstly giving Sara cause to raise her eyebrows.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she was tired of Greg's quips, why could he not just get to the point?

"The doggy do sample that Grissom found was apparently dressed quite nicely with stock ketchup," he explained.

Before Sara could fully take the ramifications, Grissom took over the phone from Greg.

"How'd the chat with the parents go?"

"Same old, she was a wonderful kid who could do no wrong," she replied, "we know who she was with yesterday, her best friend Jane Lowestoft, but there's no answer at her house. Can you have a fish around?"

"I'll get Brass on it, give me five minutes and I'll see what I can do."

Five minutes later, on the dot, the address came through of Jane's mother, Lisa.

**12:42, House of Lisa Lowestoft**

There was a scene here, reminiscent of the scene at the Landers' house. Jane sat on the couch, her father Jack on one side and her mother on the other, both with their arms wrapped protectively round her. Jane was a wreck and in a worse state than Jill's parents had been. She stared at her feet, and every glance up mirrored the death-mask of her friend. They really were alike facially, the tear-stained mascara adding to the effect that her eyes were sinking, like her heart, into her body.

"We split up about three months ago now," Lisa started, "but we decided it was worth making another go of it."

"We've been in counselling, trying to get things back on track," Jack finished.

"Jane," it was Nick's turn to do the questioning, "I know this is difficult for you, but can you run us through what happened yesterday?"

After a short pause Jane began.

"It was such a lovely day, we decided to spend some time in the park. It got so peaceful that we just lay down and drifted off. Next thing I remember it was five o'clock and I had to get back, because I was staying at my mother's tonight. So I walked with Jill to the library," the pause was short as tears welled up in her eyes. She brushed them away defiantly with the back of her hand, "and then my dad picked me up and dropped me at my mum's."

There was little left to do except collect a DNA swab from Jane and head back to the lab for the autopsy.

**13:01, The Lab**

When they got into the autopsy room, Robbins was tidying up and cleaning his hands. As he ambled towards the table in the middle of the room, Sara jumped in with the questions.

"I take it she didn't jump?"

"No," Robbins was direct as always, "apart from the fact that she didn't bring her hands up to protect herself, she doesn't have any injuries consistent with falling."

"So what are we looking at? What's the cause of death?"

"Massive haemorrhaging caused by blunt force trauma to the back of the head." His finger pointed casually at the wound which Nick had examined previously. "I found splinters of metal in the cut. I sent them to trace and they say it's galvanised steel."

Nick threw one of his wondering looks towards Robbins.

"Galvanised steel? A car and a ship?"

"Galvanised steel is used in lots of industries, it's cost effective for all sorts of products." Robbins finished the sentence with a smile. "I also found minute fracturing in the neck, consistent with a severe force being exerted to the top of the head."

"You mean like she was hit with a bat?" Sara threw a confused look at Nick.

"What's with the bat obsession?"

"I got something going with Cath that there'll be a bat death this month," he grinned, and, trying to defend himself, added "there's not been one for a while." Sara raised her eyebrows and let it drop.

"I don't think a person could have done this, it's too powerful for that. My guess is that she was hit by a car and knocked into something. The grazing on her arms suggests she bounced a few metres. Apart from that, she's got a broken leg, probably from the time of impact, and a shattered pelvis, probably also from the initial hit."

Sara decided to get to the point.

"So she was hit by a silver car, slid along the ground and cracked her skull on a lamp-post."

"There's one other thing," the Doc said, moving the cover sheet down a little, exposing her stomach. There, just below the navel was a flash of red.

"Lipstick?" Nick blurted confused.

"That's what it looks like, there's a sample with trace which I haven't checked on yet, but maybe your good girl wasn't always so good?"

Nick and Sara were caught up, talking about the lipstick as they wandered out of the lab, and it took a few seconds for Greg's appearance to register. He came running up, some sheets of paper in his hand.

"Some good news for you on that hair you found, it matches Jane's swab."

Nick and Sara exchanged a knowing glance, and it was Nick who responded first.

"Who said that was good news?"

**14:24, Interrogation Room**

Every so often Jack and Lisa Lowestoft, hands locked in worried embrace, glanced at the window to the interrogation room and towards their daughter Jane, faced by Sara and Nick.

In the room, Jane was different from before, much more relaxed, but clearly still traumatised, and sipping lightly from a plastic cup of water.

Nick hated having to put her through this, but she was a suspect now and they had to find out just what had really happened the day of Jill's murder.

"Jane, we found a hair of yours trapped in Jill's belt, have you any idea at all why it might be there?"

"Well," Jane took her words one step at a time, like a baby learning to walk, "we were in the park for ages, just laying down asleep, my hair could have got there easily by accident."

"You see, we found some lipstick on Jill as well, and I bet if we take the lipstick from that cup you're drinking from and compare it, they'll be an exact match. If you don't think so, then stick to your story, but if we're right then you'd better start helping us out. We don't want to hurt you, we just want to know what happened yesterday."

Jane exhaled slowly, looking like a broken girl who wanted her mummy she struggled to regain her composure between fits of sobs, and eventually was able to speak again.

"It was difficult," she began, "we'd known each other since we were kids, and we were always close, always around each other. The day after my parents split up I was with Jill, she was the only one who could comfort me. We'd had some drinks, she told me it would help, and it did a bit, and before I knew it we were more than just friends." She paused with the difficulty of telling a stranger her intimate details. "Every day things got stronger, we were in love, and then this happens."

Nick shot a glance at Sara.

"We know it's difficult Jane, but we need to know what happened yesterday."

"We went to a hotel, the Sanderson, and spent the afternoon there, together." Her eyes looked defensive and pleading. "It was the only place we could be together properly, our parents wouldn't understand."

"You didn't tell them?"

"My mom knew, and I tried to tell my dad last night. He tried to look ok about it, but I know he was worried inside. I don't think he was angry, he just needed some time to let things sink in."

At that moment, Grissom peeked in the door and called them out.

"I think this just makes it more clear that she didn't do it, shall we go and talk to Jill's parents again?"

**15:13, Outside the Home of John and Mary Landers**

Grissom stopped on the pathway to the house.

"You hungry?" His nose sniffed the air, and his eyes smiled knowingly.

Nick and Sara both registered their disbelief together.

"Burgers!"

They jogged down the road, and took a left to where the smell was coming from, and all three gasped at the scene that awaited them. A hot dog stall was setup on one side of the road, whilst in the middle of the road was a series of skid marks, but what really took the breath away was the lamp-post, made of galvanised steel, with a barely noticeable dent in one corner, and a brown stain beneath it. Sara ran to the hot dog stand, while Nick went to swab the blood on the lamp-post and Grissom pondered the skid marks, while his camera recorded them.

"How long have you been here?" The question came unintentionally sharp and demanding, mostly Sara was annoyed that she had missed the crime scene when it was so close.

"I come here every day, three pm to seven, catches the people coming out their hotels on an empty stomach." The half-joke crashed and burned on Sara's serious brow.

"Was all this here yesterday?" She retorted with half-impatience and half-irritation.

"No, I would have noticed, but there wasn't anything here yesterday except for some hungry Texas folk."

Sara passed the man some money and picked her hot dog from the counter, covering it in mustard and ketchup first.

"I thought you were on a diet?" Nick called over. She swabbed the ketchup from the hot dog before wandering over and handing it to him.

"The dog's for you, I just wanted some sauce."

Suddenly, Grissom shouted at them to join him. He was pointing his unwavering finger at the ground when his cell rang. He turned away to use it whilst Nick and Sara took in the patch he had been signalling to them. There was a small day-old ketchup stain on the road, with a skid mark which started only a meter ahead of it, and with tire tracks right through it. Sara crouched for a closer look.

Grissom turned back to them, his eyes alight.

"They found a car, a silver Lexus LS430 parked a couple of blocks from here. A patrolman called it in when he noticed that the front headlight was broken."

Sara stood and faced him, in her gloved hand was a shard of white plastic.

"A broken headlight, a dented lamp-post and two girls in love, it's starting to come together, but we still don't have a why, and we still don't have a who. Let's get started on that car."

**15:41 Abandoned Car**

The first thing they noticed was the broken headlight. Grissom strode to the gap in the plastic and lifted the fragments in a bag that they had found in the road. The match was uncanny.

"I think we have our murder weapon."

Nick wandered round the car and glanced into the window, at the once plush interior. Now it was a crime scene, and it looked the part. Glass was strewn inside, there was blood on the rear seat and blood on the door handles and steering wheel.

"We have our work cut out for us," Grissom pondered as he studied the view from the windscreen.

"You got any idea of what we're looking for?" Nick realised what he'd said too late as he got the warning stare from Grissom. "Yeah, I know, no preconceptions."

"We're looking for evidence Nick," was the casual response, reinforced by a quick smile creasing the sides of his mouth, then vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

The driver's door was unlocked, and once inside, Nick unlocked the other doors as well. The three quickly went to work, Sara swabbing the blood in the back, Nick the blood on the steering wheel and handles, and Grissom scraping a lick of paint from the front, and snapping a tiny bit of the headlight off, to bag and tag.

The passenger seat was awash with glass, but not fully fragmented glass, a bit like the glass that Sally had dropped when she first saw Jill's dead body below her. The larger pieces fit snugly like a well-made jigsaw, forming the shape of a distinctive liquor bottle. The damp black label, and almost anaesthetically strong smell of whiskey confirmed what Nick had assumed with the shape of the bottle.

"We got us some Jack Daniels here Griss, there's some on the seat but I think that most of it was gone from the bottle when it smashed."

"Ok," Grissom knew Nick had no need to be told what to do, but he sometimes needed permission, and it made Grissom feel more useful than he was, he knew that much. "Dust it for prints then, and I have a hunch that you might find something else on it too."

While he was rooting through the glass, Sara had found a hair in the sticky blood on the seating in the back, it was long and blonde. It could be Jane's or it could just be Jill's.

Nick turned up the next discovery, some blood on the glass, as if from a cut, and for good measure he swabbed the bottle end for saliva. The car wasn't equipped with cups after all.

Eventually it had all been bagged and swabbed and Grissom let a smile stay on his demeanour as he snapped his gloves off.

"I don't think we need anymore, let's head back to the lab and process what we have. I'll leave you to it, I have to look at some eels for Catherine." Sara made a face, inquisitive more than anything else. "Very much a case of death by fish. Don't ask."

**18:28, The Lab**

Grissom scuttled into the lab room which Sara was working in and peeked over her shoulder.

"What we got?"

Sara jumped back from the microscope with surprise, then gathered herself and told Grissom what he already knew.

"The paint we found on Jill is the same as the paint from the car, it's a definite match and the tire tracks match as well. We can say with confidence that that car hit our vic."

"Good work Sara. I've got some interesting news myself, the car is registered to a Jack Lowestoft. He reported it stolen this morning." Sara looked at him with a mark of confusion, which changed slowly to a mark of shock.

"The same Jack Lowestoft who is Jane's father? Did he do this?"

Grissom smiled slightly, knowing that the final pieces of the puzzle were settling together.

"Well I've also got a report on the blood droplet we found next to our vic. It isn't a match to Jane," the prompt was read by Sara.

"But it was a match to someone in Jane's immediate family."

"That's right, a male member of her immediate family, and guess what, the fingerprints Nick lifted from the broken bottle are his as well." Again Sara looked slightly confused, although less-so now.

"His prints are on record?"

"D and D. He was involved in a drunken bar brawl two years ago."

"We need to talk to him."

"I've already called him in, Nick's waiting for us in the interrogation room."

**18:45, Interrogation Room**

Sara and Nick sat looking at Jack Lowestoft, he had the look on his face of a rabbit caught in the headlights, probably the same look Jill had when he had hit her. Grissom stood against the back wall. Sara started the questioning.

"So Mr. Lowestoft, were you driving your car last night?" Jack shifted in his seat at that question, but kept his gaze straight ahead, no part of him wanted to be there.

"No, I dropped Jane off at her mother's and then drove straight home," Grissom's brow lifted momentarily when he heard the last part of the sentence. "I sat down with some dinner and switched on the TV. About half nine I hear this noise outside, like a car being started. So I looked out my window and all I see is my car screaming off down the road."

"Stop there Mr. Lowestoft," Grissom interrupted, a look of irritation on his face. "There's two problems with that. You're saying the car was driven away from your house, but the skid marks down the road clearly show that the car was going in the opposite direction when it had to stop suddenly. Why would a thief drive away then drive back, and why would a thief dump a body from a hit and run?" Lowestoft shifted slightly in his seat again.

"I don't know, I'm just telling you what I saw." His eyes flicked left and right as he talked, not looking directly at Nick and Sara, and never focusing, looking through them.

"The evidence tells us that you didn't see any of that," Grissom responded. "Can I see your hands please Mr. Lowestoft?"

Lowestoft held his hands forward, they visibly shook as he tried to keep them steady. He finally gave up and rested them, face down, on the table.

"The palms please," Nick interjected and pulled the hands towards him gently. "There's a cut right here Grissom, where did you get this Mr. Lowestoft?"

"I cut it," a slight pause indicated the lie, as did the slight formation of sweat on his brow "slicing bread yesterday." He looked uncomfortably and questioningly on as Nick produced some tweezers and lifted something from the cut.

"Do you own many glass knives Mr. Lowestoft?" Nick's comment cut the air, only Jack's breathing could be heard, hurried and sharp.

"I don't know where that came from, it was probably on the work surface when I was cutting the bread." Sara and Nick both formed dissatisfied smiles and cocked their heads at that comment, but Grissom remained still, pondering his next line of attack.

"Jack, we have your fingerprints on the bottle in the car, we have your blood at the place we found Jill, and we have blood in your car and on the broken bottle, which I'm guessing matches your blood. I know you want the best for Jane," Jack glanced at the two-way window as if reaching out to his family, invisible behind the tainted glass. "If you want to do what's best for her, why don't you tell us what happened now, instead of it being forced out of you in court?"

A single tear rolled down Jack's cheek and his eyes creased.

"I've been sober for three years now, since that stupid fight. I was at the stage where I couldn't remember anything, I'd wake up in random places, and I was destroying my family." He paused to regain his breath, the memories painful to bring back up. "My wife helped me through it but it put an almost impossible strain on our marriage, things just got worse and we split up three months ago. I almost started drinking again then, but I managed to control it.

"When I was dropping Jane off at her mother's yesterday she said she wanted to tell me something, she told me all about this.." he struggled for the appropriate words, he had obvious distaste for the word 'relationship', but wanted to respect Jill and his daughter, "this thing, that she and Jill had. It was all I could take, I stopped at a liquor store and I looked in the window. You know, once you get that far it's too late. I shouted at myself in my head to stay out, but I was already in the door, already paying the man and already swigging and driving to my favourite hilltop to settle my thoughts." He stopped, something too painful to tell was blocking his mouth.

"Go on Jack," Grissom had adopted his sensitive voice, partly as an interrogation ploy and partly because he felt genuinely sorry for this wrecked man, "we're not judging you, just trying to find out what happened."

After a brief pause, Jack Lowestoft continued his story.

"By the time I finally realised what I was doing, it was getting late and I was almost finished the bottle. I decided to go back, I thought I was fine, but I knew I wasn't. I was so close to being home when I suddenly saw something in front of me. There was this awful thump," he had to pause again, and glanced up at the ceiling in self pity, "and then my feet reacted and I screamed to a stop, that's when the bottle bounced off the glove compartment, and one chunk hit my hand. I didn't feel anything, didn't even know it was cut until this morning. I got out, and I couldn't even see her at first, I was looking all around, and then there she was. Crumpled against that lamp-post almost sitting up against it," his hands went to his mouth, trying to cover up what he had done, "I didn't like what her and my daughter had but that doesn't mean I didn't like her, and I loved my daughter. I just kept thinking what it would do to her, to think that I killed her. She'd never speak to me again.

"So I bundled her," he couldn't bring himself to say Jill now, "I bundled her into my car, and took her to that hotel. I didn't even know what I was thinking until I was there, and I just dropped her body on the ground, like a deer I'd just shot or something. Then I drove off, dumped the car and staggered the rest of the way home. Oh God, what's my daughter going to say?" He started crying properly now, weeping in huge gusts, and the three CSIs left the room to leave him to himself. Sara took a long glance of pity at him through the window.

Grissom looked thoughtful for a moment, and broke the silence.

"Jane and Jill went up the hill to spend some time together, Jack drove down and broke Jill's crown, but made it look like she tumbled, after."


End file.
